Posted
by
Zonk
on Sunday February 03, 2008 @05:34PM
from the always-fun-to-breath dept.

Geoffrey.landis writes "The administration announced plans to withdraw its support from FutureGen. FutureGen was a project to develop a low CO2-emission electrical power plant, supported by an alliance of a dozen or so coal companies and utilities from around the world. The new plant would have captured carbon dioxide produced by combustion and pumped it deep underground, to avoid releasing greenhouse-gas into the atmosphere. It had been intended as a prototype for next generation clean-coal plants worldwide. Originally budgeted at about a billion dollars, the estimated cost had "ballooned" to $1.8 billion, according to U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman."

It's pretty valid comparing the cost of clean coal to the cost of Nuclear or Oil? Should I have phrased it a little different? I.e. spell out the cost of ensuring a steady supply of oil is, erm, enormous?

You should indeed. Nuclear power is well understood and bringing a new reactor online can be done with technology which is already available.

The objection that I have to this program was that it was an experiment, a costly one, with no guarantees of future success. Nuclear energy isn't a panacea or necessarily the best of ideas, but the risks and challenges are well known and it can already be used to produce energy in a cost effective manner.

Most of the complaints people have about the current Fission reactors is that they are unsafe and the waste is toxic and hard to handle. But the reality is that it is really hard to get a nuclear reactor to reach a meltdown. Even the plant in Chernobyl which was being run in the least competent manner imaginable, was able to keep from reaching the really serious point where there's a sustained uncontrolled nuclear reaction. 3-mile island, the nuclear material was completely unable to make it past the huge amount of concrete that the facility was made of.

The amount of waste from a reactor tends to be exaggerated, it is significantly less material than is created by coal plants, with the ability to reprocess the majority of the radioactive material for another plant. The amount of waste that is created in the US would be reduced significantly if it were subjected to the sort of reprocessing that happens in other parts of the world.

The objection that I have to this program was that it was an experiment, a costly one, with no guarantees of future success.

You know, I'm a big fan of nuclear power and not so much of coal. Still.

If there were guarantees of future success, it wouldn't be much of an experiment. It's worth our pouring a lot of money (but still microscopic compared to our overall energy expenditures) into ambitious experiments just so that we learn the full range of options and their implications - if we learned, we example, from this experiment that "low Co2 coal" is much more dangerous and expensive (for whatever reason) than the coal industry would like us to believe, wouldn't that be worth a mere couple billion dollars?

If the USA wanted cleaner coal technology, they could have it right now, simply by forcing all coal plants to meet modern standards.

As the laws now stand, you could drive a flotilla of aircraft carriers through the loopholes. For starters, pre-1970 coal burning powerplants were effectively grandfathered in under the Bush era laws. Those powerplants don't have to be upgraded to meet current regs as long as the owner only performs "routine maintanence".

The EPA defines "routine maintanence" as anything that doesn't exceed 20% of the powerplant's value.

In 5 years you could rebuild that powerplant doing nothing more than EPA approved routine maintanence.

The objection that I have to this program was that it was an experiment, a costly one, with no guarantees of future success.

The fact that there were no guarantees of success is what makes research interesting and worth it. If you're only researching things that you're certain will lead somewhere, only incremental improvements are possible. On the other hand, fundamental research has no guarantee of finding something useful, but can lead to major breakthroughs(or not).

Yes, for example, people are always complaining about the half-life of radioactive waste.. but what exactly is the half-life of carbon-dioxide? At least the waste from fission reactors can be processed and stored easily.. the same cannot be said for CO2.

The amount of waste that is created in the US would be reduced significantly if it were subjected to the sort of reprocessing that happens in other parts of the world.

My understanding is that reprocessing spent fuel rods creates fissionable material suitable for creating atomic weapons. My guess is that we can't 100% guarantee these reprocessed fuel rods won't end up being used as weapons and that's the reason the US doesn't do this.

This is silly, not doing reprocessing has not done anything to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. This process has been used for a long time in France, Britain, and other countries, and there has never been any material reported missing. In the case of Iran for example, it was the North Koreans that gave them access to materials and tech. Some missing material from the break up of the Soviet Union, well who knows what was going on there at the time.

That's right, since Iraq is costing us orders of magnitude more than almost anything else. We really should be using more reasonable units like milliIraqs.

Close, but a miliIraq is a ridiculously small unit, much like measuring the U.S. military budget in pennies (or pesos), a more appropriate unit would be the kiloIraq. pronounced as "Kill-O-Iraq," of course.

Automatically deciding that if something is compared to what is happening in Iraq, then it should be flamebait... that's just wrong.Way too much money is being spent CURRENTLY on a situation that has gone on far too long, and that just about everyone agrees is a mistake for one reason or another. Since a vast majority believe that it was a mistake to go over there, or to still be there, we can safely look at the countless millions (billions?) that are being used to fund that ongoing issue.

$1.8bill isn't a lot of money when compared to the cost of nuclear power

Rubbish. Over in Britain the royal academy of engineering compared costs of nuclear ( yes, including decommissioning costs) to that of various energy sources: http://www.countryguardian.net/generation_costs_report2.pdf [countryguardian.net] . Essentially, while nuclear is expensive to build, the overall cost is comparable to coal fired power plants due to the low cost of fuel, and if you add on carbon capture and storage then the cost of coal overtakes nuclear rapidly.

A further thing to take into consideration is that increased energy consumption across the world combined with decreasing oil reserves is likely to drive up the price of coal/uranium. Since the fuel is a much lower proportion of the cost of nuclear power than it is for coal power this is likely to have a much lower impact upon the cost of nuclear power than for coal.

Finally, since nuclear power technology is advancing rapidly at the moment ( High temperature reactors around 2016 , breeders by 2025 , high efficiency hydrogen estimated 2030 ) the cost of nuclear plants is likely to drop ( per kilowatt generated ), while the cost of coal plants is likely to spike due to tighter emission standards.

The capture and storage research is worth it mainly because we can't expand other energy sources quick enough. In the long term it is not going to be economically competitive.

Good point though, as energy prices increase then nuclear will become more cost effective. It's probably less environmentally damaging too, as you need so much less of the stuff than you do fossil fuels.Papers here (in UK) were suggesting that the costs for Nuclear are being massively underestimated, and that the *net* . That was back when there was talk of replacing the current power stations, so may well have been more greenie FUD.

sorry but when i compare the OP's source of the royal academy of engineering vs UK papers, i have to say you'd be crazy to not go with the engineers who actually know something about nuclear power.

there's no "probably" about nuclear being safer, it's a simple fact.

there's always 2 things greenies try to call on nuclear - cost and life span. firstly while nuclear costs more initally, it's running costs see it break even with coal in 5 years. life span they will try tell you we only have 5 years of fissionable material - i make it clear right now they got that figure from the fact we have 5 years IF we all swapped to nuclear TODAY and relied totally on STOCKPILES. that means we didn't dig another ton out of the ground and didn't look for more. we also have breeder reactors which extend a plants life indefinately.

Lovely. Let us all see what those running costs are for an actual existing plant and name it please. None of the nuclear advocates on this site have known enough about their topic to actually know the "simple facts", but perhaps this time they'll be a little more than handwaving and distractions.

Your question is impossible to answer because variable costs are measured over a plants lifetime and thus they are strictly speaking not defined for any plant that is still operating. Many costs ( repairs, refueling , service, etc.. ) occur at discrete moments, and their magnitude changes as a plant ages, and thus the life-cycle variable costs are not completely determined until the plant is decomissioned. As a consequence every quotation of such costs for plants that are still operating ( or about to be built ) is a best estimate based on the experience at hand.

If we were to answer your question by taking the costs incurred by a plant up until today and average it over the time it has been in service the estimate would likely be too low because more repairs are necessary towards the end of its life. Similarly if we were to take the variable costs associated with a plant that has already been decommissioned then the estimate would be too high because technology has improved over the years. Your question is similar to the problem of estimating how long it will take to download a file. You can't answer it with certainty until after the file has been downloaded, because you don't know what will happen to your download speed before it is done. What you CAN do is to make a reasonable estimate based on previous based on previous experience and the knowledge at hand. This is the estimates that are quoted in most reports ( among others the one I gave above ).

Now, I don't expect you to accept this answer, because I've seen you argue this point before only to reject every reply you get when you don't like it, but simply put there is no way to know the life-cycle variable costs of ANY power source until after it has been decommissioned, and that is not something that applies merely to nuclear, it applies to Solar, Wave, Coal etc... Call it hand waving if you really want to, I still think you are just trying to use a bullshit argument to reject widely published figures that you personally dislike. To the best of our knowledge, the life-cycle costs of Nuclear power plants are lower than those of competing energy sources. Now if you don't trust organizations like the RAE or IEA then that is one thing, but don't try to pretend that nobody has told you about this, because it isn't the first time it is spelled out for you.

The problem is you have to run a Nuclear power plant for 5 years + beyond its useful life to decomission it (and they only last about 40 years).. during that time it's consuming resources (manpower and cash at the mimimum - Sizewell A needs 100 employees on site 24/7), and after decomssioning renders the site uninhabitable for 100 years.

Nuclear has become an option due to CO2 concerned after it was largely abandoned in the 90's, but it's not because it's cheaper.

Isn't the war in Iraq great? A project goes $800,000,000 over budget and it's all fine and dandy and, to the Slashdot crowd, it gets a free pass because the war in Iraq costs more. Can't we at least give a nod to the fact that they're absurdly over budget, and entertain the possibility that they're just frittering away money wastefully?
Yeah, so the funds are going to the iraq war and we all looooove to hate it. But here's some news for you: money's fungible; it'd all have to come out of the same taxes an

I'd like to note that $1 billion is about what the government spends on each of the new modern military aircraft that they purchase. If we just took a little out of the defense budget, the cost of something like this, which is a PROTOTYPE and expected to be expensive, wouldn't be as much of an issue.

Heck, if this powerplant were a weapons system and the cost overrun was only 80%, it would be considered a bargain. Naah, it would be canceled because it was too cheap. No doubt there was no money in the budget to grease the right palms.

IIRC, our B-2 stealth bombers were purchased for approximately 1 billion each. That was the figure I remember being quoted most often. The shining bastion of accuracy and credibility Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] cites the unit price as being between "$727 million to $2.2 billion"

You blithering idiots! If given a choice between sucking on a black cloud of death, or not, I would choose not. I'm sure that Congress is wasting that much grandstanding with the major league baseball steroid inquiry that is before them, AGAIN.

And it's only available 12 hours a day, costs a fortune to tap (and if you mention Nanosolar I suggest you call them up and offer them $1 per watt for their solar panels - the only response you'll get is fits of giggles), and battery backup is extremely expensive. The world's total solar power capacity is roughly equivalent to one unit of your average coal-fired power station. And while solar cells are large maintenance free, solar thermal power, which the people who've looked into the issue generally regard as a more serious solution, is not.

Please go away and actually do some research into the costs of the various energy options, and you might appreciate why research into carbon capture and storage is money well spent.

[solar energy is] only available 12 hours a day [...] and battery backup is extremely expensive

Those two tired-old bullshit arguments won't matter until there is more solar capacity online than we can use in real time, which won't happen for two decades under even the most favorable set of assumptions.

Then obviously we should be devoting the funds to stopping Earth's rotation. With the US facing the Sun 24/7 we get 24 hours of solar power and more hours for crops to grow for biofuels. It'd also save us a fortune in lighting at night and allow for an unlimited work day. Seems like a win win.

Please go away and actually do some research into the costs of the various energy options

I live in Australia. I have solar panels on my roof at home. The installation costs were subsidised by the Federal Government. My panels generate more power than I actually use, and the excess is fed back into the grid at a credit, so the power company ends up owing me money at the end of the year.

Grid-tied solar and wind only work well when they make up a relatively small fraction of energy production. It also helps if you've got a lot of hydropower in the grid as well. Denmark gets away with producing much of their energy from wind because they're part of a wider Scandinavian power grid.

I think you're the one who actually hasn't done your research, and your tone is offensive. How about a little civility?

Pal, I have been looking into this issue for years. I recently had an article published on th

If you can't / won't do it NOW, then the long emergency will get longer. And Darker. No, it's not the end of the world. It's just a new world we won't recognise, and one that won't likely permit 7 billion people shitting all over it.

You can buy a shit load of grid tied windmills for 1.8 billion dollars...

They might have been *supporting* it but they weren't *paying* for it. So you're right, but it was the government's money that was being pissed up against the wall. That 1.8bn would be much better spent on a no carbon wind or solar farm.

You can buy a shit load of grid tied windmills for 1.8 billion dollars

I must say you have a very good point there.

I wonder why they don't find something more constructive to do with all that CO2? Plants use water and sun to split CO2 and release O2, why can't we either make something that does that, or use plants to do it for us? I don't know, something like a giant version of what looks like a waste treatment plant. (with the large covered pools)

Is the rate of absorption too slow for that, where they'd need an unreasonably large biomass, or what's the problem?

Pumping CO2 undergound to get rid of it is about as forward-thinking as landfills. Burying it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it resurface well after you're dead. (and your elections are over)

Is the rate of absorption too slow for that, where they'd need an unreasonably large biomass, or what's the problem?

The problem is the need for a huge amount of biomass and huge amount of energy to keep the process going. (For instance, here in the US Pacific Northwest, you'll need considerable heating capacity for a good chunk of the year.)

We are using plants to absorb CO2 from power plant effluent, I don't have the URL handy but one experimental plant in Arizona had to be shut down because the algae the were growing grew too well and clogged up the works. algae can be up to 50% oil which can be used for food oil or biodeisel. using the oil for biodeisel isn't exactly carbon neutral but it's better than burn coal for electicity then still burning petro-deisel for transportaion. The only draw-back is the plants only absorb CO2 during the day.

Yes, it should be obvious to all patriotic Americans that the real solution is to pump the excess CO2 into water. In fact, many of the refreshing soft beverages currently available on your grocer's shelves, including the entire flavor line of Coca-Cola brand beverage products, contain significantly more carbonation than most sparkling water. When you drink beverages that contain still/non-sparkling water, the terrorists win. Have a Coke

Yes, but humans don't exactly have a great track record with underground dumping.

I remember doing a little research on CO2 sequestering a little while back for an ethics class. The problem isn't so much the idea itself but the implementation...most companies simply do not want to spend enough to create deposits that will last for, as you said, 300,000,000 years, and instead are trying to fill old coal and oil deposits without making sure they can hold that much gas. They really don't care though: they'll a

I don't know the details of their plan, but it seems unlikely to me that there can be any realistic expectation that when you pump CO2 into the ground, however deep, that it's going to stay there.

In the 1960s, Rocky Mountain Arsenal tried to get rid of waste by pumping it into the ground. When they started doing that, there was an increase in seismic activity in the region, including several earthquakes that caused significant damage. When they finally stopped doing it, the seismic activity tapered off.

The scientists who are working on this give several reasons as to why it's plausible.

If you're pumping the CO2 into a depleted gas field, that gas field captured natural gas for many millions of years. Another type of disposal site that's been proposed is deep saline acquifers, in which case the CO2 will dissolve in the water, which has also stayed where it is for millions of years.

Finally, if you're really paranoid there's mineral sequestration, where you react the CO2 with various types of rock to form carbonates, which are very stable compounds (they're rocks, basically).

I live near the site Futuregen was to be built. There was fierce competition between Illinois and Texas for the location of the plant. Illinois was chosen based on science not politics. I have heard that Bush was furious that Texas was not chosen, pulled a few strings and the project was cancelled. From what I have read this was a technology that would work and let us take advantage of the abundant coal supplies without damaging the environment.

I have heard that Bush was furious that Texas was not chosen, pulled a few strings and the project was cancelled.

If there is any truth to that rumour, that alone is reason enough to drag the man out on the streets and put him up against a wall. Not to mention the rest of the hideous crimes he has committed. Why on earth have the american public - one which is so proud of its supposed ability to take down a corrupt government - not executed this man yet?

Why on earth have the american public - one which is so proud of its supposed ability to take down a corrupt government - not executed this man yet?

I think it says much about the success of the social conditioning of the American people. After all else is said and done, one can measure the effects of mind control simply by looking at the end results. I think this was even noted somewhere in the bible using an agriculture analogy concerning fruit.

I have heard that Bush was furious that Texas was not chosen, pulled a few strings and the project was cancelled.

Please link to the source of this fact. Or, consider the possibility that it's just a bunch of shrill nonsense being passed around by someone suffering from classic BDS. Read up a thread or two, and consider the fact that the notion of this approach has already been completely eclipsed by other developments.

...of oil. The point is to start using clean "something". Let's use some clean coal. And maybe a few windmills. And build some solar panels and tidal force power plants. And some nuclear power plants. And cultivate the seas for algae, while growing various biofuels on the earth. Let's do it all, and let market forces decide which ones stick (hint: it'll probably be a combination of some of the above).

One of the reasons it's been an American policy to keep Cuba under embargo is because they are a symbol of success without American support in the Western Hemisphere. Originally, I think, military planners were genuinely scared of the ideological impact of a successful Cuba, despite the fact that they were no more propped up from Russia than Japan was from the United States. Now, businesses, mostly in the aeronautical and arms industries prop up the failed foreign policies of the 60s through the 80s in orde

Recently released statistics on the infant mortality rate in the Western hemisphere yielded an odd conclusions -- Cuba's infant mortality rate, 16 6.0 per 1,000, is now lower than the U.S. infant mortality rate, at 7.2 per 1,000. Given Cuba's poverty level, its 6.0 rate is very impressi

Cuba under Castro? Part of western civilization?? LOLAside from its own supply, Cuba gets oil from Venezuela. Cuba, a country of 11 million people, consumes 200,000 barrels of oil per day. That's a lot, given they only have a few cars and a sorry economy of the country.

Also, your claim about their life expectancy being higher than the US is wrong.

Thank God the goverment had the foresight to cancel this project. Although it may have helped stop climate change, it would have flooded the underground with CO2, causing angry mole-men to declare war on us surface dwellers. I am thankful to delay the welcoming of our mole-men overloards.

It takes energy to sequester carbon dioxide, and if the energy that this takes is as great as the energy to unsequester it (that is, to release it from coal), then there is no point in burning it because the effect of burning and sequestering it yields a net energy return of zero. So far I've seen no presentations of the efficiency of sequestration. Seeing as how corn ethanol has a net energy yield of less than zero, I'm dubious about sequestration and, until I learn otherwise, will assume it's a big "kick the ball down the road" diversion, like hydrogen cars. I really wish there were more writers familiar with thermodynamics writing about these things. When it comes to energy schemes, it's not just the thought that counts.

No. We know we're polluting our own air and we like to do something about it.

Maybe not all of us, of course, because it's our god-given right to consume like maniacs and pollute like hell. The time when there is enough of everything is really over and invading iraq for their oil isn't going to help us in the long run. Yes, it sucks, but it's reality.

'Clean' coal is one of the few alternative which would actually scale enough to be able to provide the energy we require. It's also something which should be possible within a reasonable timescale - certainly before oil starts to run out.

Sure, it's not a pancea - but it might be able to give us the time figure out how to exploit renewable energies cheaply and safely enough..

Clean coal, fine. I'm sure there are ways to "scrub" CO2 if we think long and hard enough. Coal gasification plants for instance are said to be a lot cleaner than "conventional" coal plants, albeit not when it comes to the release of CO2 unfortunately, in fact a lot more CO2 is created. But maybe they'll find a way around that too. Pumping CO2 underground on the other hand, I'm sorry, but I have a hard time accepting that as a reasonable alternative. I'm far too afraid that this is just the same thinking as with nuclear energy. "Oh, we only have to store it for a few millenia and then it'll be perfectly safe." Yeah right, as if that stuff is actually going to stay down there, it's gas for crying out loud. What if a massive cloud of CO2 is released suddenly, due to a massive earthquake or whatnot? It's one thing to prevent CO2 from being created, it's quite another to try and "put it away" until the end of times... I'm not so sure that investing so much money into a project like this is really worth it. At best, it seems to me a temporary solution, with potentially fatal drawbacks later on. We shouldn't be thinking about how to put this stuff away, we need to think about ways of creating less of it! Alternative fuels, more fuel efficient cars (especially in the US!) and nuclear fusion, ESPECIALLY nuclear fusion.

Gases do exist underground naturally. A friend of mine is a research scientist for this technology. He assures me it is technically feasible, and safe too (provided you find the right spot underground to do it (I'm not convinced personally). The major problem with it is cost. Basically, it ends up being cheaper to run solar panels.

Of course, the reason Australia has been investing so heavily in this tech is that Australia has a crap-load of coal, which is propping up it's economy. If international demand for coal drops because people get serious about climate change, Australia's economy goes down the crapper (unless, of course, it goes ahead and tries something different).

I have valves installed that hold a 10,000 psi well down in Venezuela right now. Many of them.

Trust me, we have valves and instrumentation that can handle CO2 underground. We already do this with underground natural gas storage and CO2 isn't a giant change.

And yes, I sell valves. Relief valves, control valves, block valves, cryogenic valves, high temperature valves, steam valves. All kinds of valves. All kinds of materials.:) C02 is no big deal to hold underground. It can be done

CO2 is commonly pumped underground to help retrieve hard-to-get oil from underground oil deposits. Unfortunately, they typcially manufacture the CO2 nearby, so it doesn't reduce greenhouse gases at all. If they could use flue gases from coal fired plants for this, it might be worth it. But the hard part is getting the CO2 to the right location, so I don't hold out promise for that.

And as far as the fact that it may someday come up, methane (natural gas) is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and we go to great lengths to get it out of the ground. If we put the CO2 in those deep geological formations, we would be no worse off than we were previously.

Pumping CO2 underground on the other hand, I'm sorry, but I have a hard time accepting that as a reasonable alternative. [...] What if a massive cloud of CO2 is released suddenly, due to a massive earthquake or whatnot?

Statoil has been pumping CO2 underground in the Sleipner field [iea.org] off the coast of Norway for a few years now. You have to keep in mind that, at those pressures, CO2 becomes a liquid; but, even as a gas, you are putting CO2 in underground pockets that have a proven record of holding gas and hyd

All his points were completely valid, you're just subscribing to the theory of 'out of sight, out of mind'

'Clean coal' is an oxymoron. It doesn't work. It's been touted here (Australia) by the last government as a way of keeping our coal power stations running too, but that was by a right wing, environmental hating government. When anyone looks at it seriously, it's all bunk.

Rather than investing in technologies to actually make energy without the horrendous environmental cost (solar, window, tidal etc. etc.) WHY on earth would you prefer them to invest money in continuing to use the horror that is coal, but just shove the waste underground?

How does that at all sound like a good idea to you?

"you're saying that because there is a tiny, remote chance that Co2 might leak into the atmosphere, that we should just put it into the atmosphere first"

Is exactly the wrong way of thinking. The options are not pump it underground and hope it stays there, vs. pump it into the air. The options are create vast amounts of CO2 and worse, OR produce power in an ACTUAL CLEAN MANNER.

Good riddance to the plan, and it would be great if it were just stricken from the worldwide stage overall... stop building coal plants, you can make the energy in so many other ways.

OK, so let's check all these things off:etards like you would be the first to log on from their imac down at the local starbucks, and start complaining about all the power black outs and how you can't afford your expreso enemas anymore because your power bill is $20000 a year.I don't own a mac, hate starbucks and know how to spell espresso. Also I love how you pulled a value like $20K out of your butt.

tidal power is limited by geography and solar is a JOKE when your talking about powering a country.Tidal ma

With the timeframe we've got to ward off the feedback loop that will come with the melting of the permafrost, there is really no time left to invest in new technologies. Fifteen years ago I was an Earth Firster protesting proposed new nuclear plants. Now I'm all for building two of them in my backyard starting yesterday.We've got two options. Mass transition to nuclear power ASAP or our great great grandkids living under domes. We can still work towards a post-nuclear future were everything is renewable

If it weren't for risk takers, there'd be no pure silicon, no transistors, no fabs, no chips and our industry wouldn't be around.

When I take a risk and kill someone, I go to jail for manslaughter.

When Big Business takes a risk and kills 1000 someones, the CEO gets a bonus.

Because of the risk of punishment in return for misjudging risk, I take the time to research what I'm doing and implement safeguards and backups in order to reduce the risk as much as possible. History demonstrates that corporations canno

Warren Anderson is considered a fugitive by Indian law, he has been charged with manslaughter there. The US did not grant extradition though, I do not know why. The case is a bit more complicated than you make it look.

Other than that I agree, some big corporations can get away with crime more easily than individuals as they have leverage on governments. It's no surprise that a monopoly a justice produces justice that sucks.

My engineering department is the home of one of the most advanced coal research labs in the US - while you don't provide any reasoning for your statement that it's all "bunk", there is actually quite significant work going on, and this plant would have been a big testbed for it.

In all honesty, abandoning such a project seems like a big step backwards.

Don't be too concerned about the loss of funding. Australia's Eastern seaboard is sitting on mountains of coal and the current gov. is pushing research into clean coal. So is China (the biggest user), so if the USA doesn't do it, then someone else will.As for the comments I've read so far, it's not the CO2 only that is worrisome, but the fact that the waste heat generated from power plants (should read all heat exchange type power plants) is directly warming the Earth.Not only should there be no CO2 from power plants, but there should also be no waste heat either.So solar power/geothermal/hydro and to some extent, nuclear technologies have the clear edge.

One system currently in focus by the Australian gov. are 1.5kw domestic solar roof installations feeding directly into the grid. If you have every house (excluding high rise) with an installation from Hobart (far South) towards the equator, then that would make a significant impact on all fossil fuel use. Currently, such an installation costs approx $15,000/household and the gov. pays for half.Every country or geophysical region will have their own solutions, so I doubt that there will be a single technology that would be the panacea for everyone.http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/rebates/index.html [greenhouse.gov.au]

"Can a coal-fired power plant completely eliminate carbon-dioxide emissions? That's what Swedish energy company Vattenfall is hoping to prove with a pilot project under construction in Germany that promises to be the world's first emissions-free carbon power-generating plant.

The $62 million, 30-megawatt facility, scheduled to go into operation by mid-2008, makes use of oxyfuel technology, in which coal is burned in pure oxygen instead of air. That leaves the resulting emissions nitrogen-free and easier to clean and store. Once the plant in Schwarze Pumpe, south of Berlin, is fully operational, the plan is to compress the CO2 into liquid and inject it into porous rock about a kilometer below ground."

My interpretation is that this would be a stop-gap until we can develop an efficient means of using renewable energy. Why?

Shifting reliance from oil to coal would "Make America safer!" because the US is like the Saudi Arabia of coalChina is building powerplants like crazy, and guess what they're using? COALStoring CO2 underground is a temporary solution, but it would buy us some more time to develop means of converting it into something in another physical state (gas or liquid). Then perhaps we could begin to fill up those oil fields we've been draining for the past hundred & some odd years.